One more criminal could join the ranks — Joaquín
"El Chapo" Guzmán, the elusive kingpin of the Sinaloa cartel, who
was recently captured in Mexico after a covert
interview with actor Sean Penn.

ADX Florence is the highest-security prison in the entire
country, reserved for “a very small subset of the inmate
population who show absolutely no concern for human life," in the
words ofNorman Carlson, the former director of the
Federal Bureau of Prisons.

And there's a "very strong possibility" that Guzmán
will spend the rest of his days there, Jens
David Ohlin, an international law professor at Cornell,
told Business Insider via email.

"Obviously the US government will want to deter the
possibility of his soldiers even trying an escape, so they will
want to house him in the most secure facility
possible."

A portion of the shower
floor is removed to show a secret tunnel used by Joaquin "El
Chapo" Guzman to escape from Mexico's Altiplano prison in
2015.Reuters

"First, there is the embarrassment of his multiple
escapes. Second, there is burgeoning reputation as a 'folk
hero,'" Ohlin said. "All of this adds up to a compelling desire
to extradite him to the United States."

Guzmán "has already filed various actions in Mexico to stop
his extradition, and I'm sure that some of those are still
pending, so the question is whether or not the government in
Mexico is going" to let him continue fighting the process, said
Marcos Jiménez, a former US attorney for the Southern District of
Florida.

At least one prominent drug-cartel
leader, Juan Garcia Abrego, was also sent to ADX after being
successfully extradited, according to the
Associated Press.

Recaptured
drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted by soldiers at
the hangar belonging to the office of the Attorney General in
Mexico City, Mexico, January 8, 2016.REUTERS/Henry Romero

A federal court — possibly in New York, Chicago, or San
Diego, according to Ohlin — will handle the prosecution (although
about a dozen cities are jockeying for the
responsibility).

Simply put, criminals tried federally end up in federal
prison, and ADX is the most secure the US can offer.

There, every inmate spends roughly 23 hours a day in solitary
confinement,
The New York Times reported in an in-depth feature with
unprecedented access to the facility.

The Times described their daily life like this:

Inmates spend their days in 12-by-7-foot cells with thick
concrete walls and double sets of sliding metal doors (with solid
exteriors, so prisoners can’t see one another). A single window,
about three feet high but only four inches wide, offers a notched
glimpse of sky and little else.

Each cell has a sink-toilet combo and an automated shower,
and prisoners sleep on concrete slabs topped with thin
mattresses. Most cells also have televisions (with built-in
radios), and inmates have access to books and periodicals, as
well as certain arts-and-craft materials. Prisoners in the
general population are allotted a maximum of 10 hours of exercise
a week outside their cells, alternating between solo trips to an
indoor “gym” (a windowless cell with a single chin-up bar) and
group visits to the outdoor rec yard (where each prisoner
nonetheless remains confined to an individual cage).

All meals come through slots in the interior door, as does
any face-to-face human interaction (with a guard or psychiatrist,
chaplain or imam). The Amnesty report said that ADX prisoners
“routinely go days with only a few words spoken to them.”

"The biggest difference [for El Chapo]," Ohlin said, "would
be the amount of time spent in solitary confinement. And there
won’t be any tunnels leading to his shower."

These
outdoor recreation cages are for prisoners in the step-down
program, which allows inmates to transfer to less-restrictive
areas.Amnesty
International